


I Cannot Say That I Was Ready For This

by Chash



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Actors, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Minor Monty Green/Nathan Miller
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 14:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18662563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chash/pseuds/Chash
Summary: When Bellamy gets his soulmark, he doesn't think much of it. He doesn't know his soulmate, and he has no idea when he'll meet them, but he's not in a rush. They're his soulmate, right? He'll find them sooner or later.A year and a half later, his sister calls him up because Clarke Griffin posted her soulmark on instagram, and it's a match for his.He's got a soulmate, and she's famous.





	I Cannot Say That I Was Ready For This

Bellamy's soulmark shows up on his twenty-fourth birthday without fanfare or drama, and it takes him a few months to get used to it. It's a sun and a moon on the inside of his right wrist, not a _bad_ mark, even kind of cool, but the positioning is awkward. It's always catching the corner of his eye, an unfamiliar thing that isn't really a part of him.

But it is, of course, and he does come to accept and even like it. It's small and fairly inconspicuous, but easy to find for anyone looking, which keeps him from getting into awkward conversations about it. And it's the kind of tattoo he'd get himself, if he got a tattoo, so that's a bonus. It's always nice to discover that you like the inner representation of yourself.

Mostly, though, he doesn't think about the soulmark. He'd worried off and on that he might not get one, so he's glad he did, but that's about it. Statistically speaking, most people don't meet their soulmates until their late-twenties, and he can't say he's in a rush. _Soulmate_ is a big concept, and he'd like to finish grad school before he starts thinking about a serious relationship, let alone _the_ serious relationship. 

He's twenty-five when his sister calls him up one November afternoon and demands, "Did you hear?"

He's working on a paper in the library and nearly didn't pick up, but he convinced himself it might be an emergency and stepped out to take the call. Now he's glad he did; Octavia sounds frantic. "Hear what?" he asks. "What's wrong?"

"You're Clarke Griffin's soulmate!"

It takes a minute for his mind to wrap around the words. They all make sense individually, and the concept isn't even _that_ foreign. Celebrities turning twenty-four is always big news, and Bellamy's always found it a little creepy. The public nature of soulmarks is bad enough when it's just friends and family; with famous people, everyone thinks it's their business. 

So he knew that Clarke Griffin's twenty-fourth birthday was coming up and that everyone was waiting to see what her soulmark would be. It's the kind of thing that makes about as much sense to him as playing the lottery does; the odds of anything meaningful coming from it are basically nil, because there are so many possibilities and so few that are relevant to any individual person. He assumed he'd hear at some point what her soulmark was and it would mean absolutely nothing to him. It's true of most soulmarks, and especially true of celebrity soulmarks.

Still, he plugs _Clarke Griffin soulmark_ into google and is immediately greeted by mirror images of the mark on his own wrist.

"Holy shit," he breathes.

"You didn't know?" Octavia asks.

"I wasn't keeping up. Why would I care abo--" he starts, and trails off, because the reason he'd care about Clarke Griffin's soulmark is right in front of him. The Google image results are full of it; thousands and thousands of sites uploading the same picture in the space of a few hours.

At least Octavia doesn't rub it in. "It is yours, right? It looks like yours. And it's in the right place."

Matching soulmarks is a tough thing, and it's even harder to do with a soulmark that isn't your own. Bellamy knows vaguely what his friends' soulmarks look like and where they are, but he'd second-guess if he saw someone with what seemed to be their mirror image. Miller's soulmark is on his back, and Bellamy's only seen it like three times; if he met someone who had a maple leaf on their right shoulder blade, he'd send Miller a picture, but he wouldn't be _sure_. There's always the possibility of the same basic shape and same rough position, but something missing in the details.

He holds his arm up to the screen, looking at his own soulmark next to Clarke Griffin's; it looks like a perfect match.

"Yeah," he tells his sister. "It's mine."

*

If there's a protocol for what to do when you discover a celebrity is your soulmate, Bellamy doesn't know what it is. He knows that there are celebrities whose soulmarks were a big deal when they showed up, and that some of them even had non-famous soulmates who were thrust into the spotlight, but Bellamy doesn't know what the steps were between _I'm a celebrity's soulmate_ and _fame_ were, how they got in touch or what they did to make it work. 

Before he lets himself start doing research, he makes himself finish his paper, even if it's definitely not the best thing he's ever written. It's not like he's going to want to do a better job on it later; this is definitely as good as it gets.

Bellamy knows Clarke Griffin in the way he knows most A-list celebrities, primarily as a name and list of career highlights. She started out as the precocious tween on some prime-time drama, and as she got older, her role got bigger. As she got more acclaim and name recognition, she started being cast in movies, and now that her show is over, she's mostly just taking Oscar-bait roles and presumably enjoying being rich and famous.

Not that he blames her; that sounds pretty great.

The soulmark picture is from her official instagram, where it was posted with the caption, "Since everyone is asking," followed by sun and moon emoji. The comments are full of people congratulating her and people disappointed about all the other celebrities whom her mark doesn't match, but there are definitely also a few people saying that it's _them_ , and she should email them or check their profiles for proof. He checks a couple of them and finds what is obviously just Clarke's soulmark, reversed and photoshopped onto someone else's wrist.

So leaving an instagram comment doesn't seem particularly productive. Not that he was really thinking about it. He doesn't even have an instagram.

Miller texts while he's reading an article about Jenna Marshall's soulmate, some woman from the midwest who apparently got in touch with Jenna over Twitter and moved to Hollywood. The two of them were engaged and married in under six months, divorced in another year, and now the soulmate appears on reality TV shows while Jenna Marshall hosts them.

On the one hand, it's not exactly encouraging, but on the other, he has to admit they seem kind of perfect for each other, so the soulmate system definitely works. 

**Miller** : are you clarke griffin's soulmate  
be honest

 **Me** : From what I can tell, yeah

 **Miller** : huh  
how's that going?

He puts his head down on the table for a second, just to collect his thoughts, and then grabs his stuff to head home. He had been staying in the library primarily as a defense mechanism, but if Miller knows, everyone else will know soon enough. And he's going to have to deal with it eventually. He might as well do it somewhere with beer.

Miller glances up from the TV when he comes in. "Are you famous yet?"

Bellamy flops onto the couch with a groan. "So far just you and my sister know. Does that count?"

"Depends, is your sister telling everyone?"

"Not as far as I know." He rubs his face. "Fuck, what do I do?"

"Slide into those DMs."

"Seriously."

"Seriously? Take a few picture of your wrist, hashtag it, at her, and she'll see it sooner or later."

"And then what?"

"You know, most people would say this is good news. Celebrity soulmate is hitting the jackpot."

"Most of the ones I read about didn't turn out that well."

"So, what? You're not going to even try to get in touch with her?"

Bellamy rubs his face. The truth is, it shouldn't just be his decision. If he decides to just ignore the soulmate thing, then Clarke won't get her soulmate either. And she's probably expecting to get them. Clarke Griffin's soulmark is going to be everywhere, and if no one steps forward as her soulmate, she'll probably think they just don't have their mark yet. And she'll probably have people in her instagram mentions telling her that they're her soulmate with increasingly convincing photoshopped pictures until her real soulmate does show up.

Plus, if his soulmate knew who he was, he'd want them--her, _Clarke_ \--to tell him. He always wants to know things.

"No," he says. "No, you're right. You really think it can go viral?"

Miller smirks. "Yeah, I think we can make that happen."

*

"So, we might have actually found your soulmate on twitter," says Monty.

Clarke raises her eyebrows. "Monty, no one has ever found their soulmate on _twitter_."

"Definitely not true," says Raven. "If you go into hashtag my soulmark, you find tons of people connecting over their soulmark selfies. Twitter is actually a great way to find your soulmate."

"But also assholes and white supremacists," Monty adds. "We're not generally pro-twitter here, but in this case it's a good resource."

It makes sense, when they put it like that, but Clarke's overall take on the whole soulmate thing is still that it's more trouble than it's worth. It's been less than a week since her birthday, and it feels like the whole stupid thing has engulfed her life. She didn't ask to get a soulmark, she just turned twenty-four and didn't have a choice. And now there are all these people trying to convince her they're her destiny, which she doesn't even want.

But she asked Raven and Monty to look into this, so the least she can do is listen to them.

"Okay, fine. What did you find?"

"First off, there were a ton of people who were clearly making it up, so if this guy isn't legit, he's at least doing a better job faking it than anyone else."

"It's a guy?" she asks, feeling her stomach flip.

"Bellamy Blake," says Monty. "He's twenty-five, getting his masters' in history at Cornell. He posted a video of his right wrist with a sun-and-moon soulmark that matches yours on Wednesday. He asked everyone to signal boost to make sure you'd see it, tagged us and some fan groups and used some hashtags. It looks legit, so people picked it up and here we are."

"It's got a lot of likes and shares," Raven adds. "And people asked him for more proof so he took some pictures of, like, his arm next to specific objects and stuff. It's all consistent and looks real. Plus, his twitter is--" She pauses, thinking it over. "If this is a con, it's a long con."

"Which means what?"

"He joined twitter six years ago, he follows like ten people--his sister and I'm guessing some college friends. Sometimes he RTs stuff, but mostly he just likes people's statuses. It's not what I would do if I was trying to make a fake person, it looks like a real person who doesn't use twitter much."

"And he doesn't seem great with technology," Monty adds. "In a way that's hard to fake."

"You two think this is really my soulmate," Clarke says. It's not impossible, obviously--the existence of her soulmark implies the existence of a soulmate somewhere in the world--but she didn't really think they'd find hers so soon.

Then again, if he's twenty-five, he's had the mark for a year, and it's pretty conspicuous. His friends must all know. It just takes one person to make the connection.

"Did any of the ten people he's following comment on the post?" she adds.

"Almost all of them. His sister quote-tweeted and said _my brother is Clarke Griffin's soulmate, y'all_ ," says Raven. "With, like, a billion exclamation points. She's nineteen."

Clarke takes a few slow, measured breaths. She asked Raven and Monty to help with this because she's terrible with social media and she knew that as soon as her soulmark showed up, it would be a zoo. They planned all of this, from the official release of her mark to the monitoring of all the people who rushed to claim it was them, that they were her one-and-only.

It doesn't even make _sense_ , lying about something like this. As soon as she met them, she'd see it wasn't real. 

"Okay," she says, once her thoughts have realigned themselves. "So we think he's legit. What's the next step? Do I get in touch with him? What do I say?"

"He did start following you, so you could DM him. Is there something he could do to prove it to you?"

The thing is, if Raven and Monty believe him, Clarke pretty much does too. They'll know better than she does if this guy is on the level, and they both think he is. He's probably her soulmate.

Which is a lot harder to deal with. Believing him is so much worse.

"I guess I could skype him or something? If all he wants is to talk to me, then he'll get what he wants, but it's not like he can mug me or blackmail me or anything."

"Yeah, that's probably fine."

"One of us could get in touch with him," Monty adds. "Give him one more hoop to jump through."

"I'm trusting you two on this one," says Clarke. "Whatever you think won't get me catfished and murdered."

"That's always the goal, yeah. I'll contact him as your assistant and see about setting something up."

Monty goes, presumably to do that, but Raven stays, studying Clarke with a critical eye. "Everything cool?"

"Yeah."

"Really?"

She won't ask again, which means this is when Clarke has to decide. "I was really hoping my soulmate was going to be younger than me or living under a rock. Anything to buy me some more time."

"Well, at least this way we can stop looking. As long as it's legit, you can just announce that you found him and everyone can stop trying to convince you it's them."

"Yeah, that would be nice." She sighs. "Does he seem like my soulmate?"

"Well, he doesn't like twitter, that's a good first step. And he seems like a good guy. Everything else, that's kind of up to you."

 _Bellamy Blake_. It's not a bad name. None of this is bad news, so far. 

She taps her wrist. "Yeah, I guess it is."

*

Clarke might not be good at twitter or tumblr or instagram, but she at least knows how google works, and Bellamy Blake isn't exactly a common name, so the results are pretty much all about him. Most of them are also about her soulmark, which is surreal, but at least some of the articles have pictures and basic biographic information. Bellamy is--cute, honestly. He has black hair and dark eyes, and his face is sprinkled with freckles that seem to multiply as she tries to locate them all. He's finishing up his degree in the spring, and he wants to teach high school.

"My sister told me about the soulmark," he explains to the local newspaper, one of the few outlets he agreed to talk to. "I had a paper due, so I wasn't really keeping up. Celebrity gossip isn't a big priority for me. And she might have been wrong about it; they've only released one picture of her mark and there could be differences I didn't notice. I'm hoping she sees the tweets and can decide for herself if she thinks it's a match."

The author notes that Bellamy declined an in-person meeting, citing his heavy course load, which she seems to find suspicious, but Clarke thinks is probably legitimate. She didn't go to college, let alone grad school, but Thanksgiving is coming up and he probably has a lot to do before break.

The articles that are actually setting out to discredit Bellamy aren't really any more convincing. Most of them are ranking people claiming to be her soulmate from least to most likely, and Bellamy is at the #1 spot in every list. They're all hedging their bets, but he's provided more evidence than anyone else, and Buzzfeed even dug up a picture of him at a party last year on Facebook. It's impossible to make out his soulmark in any detail, but the positioning is right and it _could_ match Clarke's.

"At this time, we believe that Bellamy Blake either is Clarke Griffin's soulmate or has a soulmark very similar to hers," the article concludes. "Unless he had someone else upload a picture to Facebook with a fake soulmark matching Clarke Griffin's as-yet unknown soulmark a year ago. In which case, he probably deserves a shot with her for pulling it off."

Clarke flips back to the image, this messy-haired boy with his right hand raised, waving to someone off-camera. He looks--happy. Friendly. He seems like a good guy.

She shouldn't be getting attached to the idea of him, shouldn't build him up into some ideal without any foundation. A few interviews and a cursory glance at his twitter feed isn't enough to know anything about him.

But she wants to know about him. It's a start.

*

Bellamy gets skype just so he can give Clarke Griffin's assistant his username, which is about a dozen different levels of fucking _weird_. He'd gotten enough attention with his _I'm Clarke Griffin's soulmate_ tweets that he was pretty sure they'd get back to her, but that doesn't mean he's ready to talk to her.

He's going to, obviously, he's just not ready for it.

The call is scheduled for three p.m. his time, noon hers. He forces himself to get some actual work done in the morning, but as soon as he has lunch, he's basically wrecked for the rest of the day. He might not be a Clarke Griffin superfan, but she's a celebrity, and his soulmate. Just one of those would make him nervous enough; both of those together is a fucking nightmare.

He logs into skype fifteen minutes early and sees her already online: cg83410982, the most incognito name of all time, probably generated by skype itself. It's definitely a burner account, one she'll never log into again, and he can't really blame her, but it makes the whole thing weirder. Both of them have signed up for new usernames just to have a conversation.

Finding your soulmate is supposed to be this great romantic moment, but Bellamy's having trouble feeling it.

Clarke calls him while he's still debating if it's too early for him to call her, which at least means the dilemma is resolved. Even if the pop-up notification is fucking terrifying, enough so that he has a second of blank panic before he hits accept, that's at least a new problem.

Bellamy didn't watch Clarke's show regularly, but he's seen a few of her movies, including one she did last year where she starred as a twenty-three-year-old who was anxious about getting her soulmark because she was in love with her best friend, who just so happened to share her birthday and was, of course, her soulmate after all. It hadn't been the best movie, but Clarke was cute and did well with the role.

It was the last time he saw her, aside from the soulmark research he did, and it's so strange to see her now, in the small window on his computer screen, slightly pixelated because his wifi is kind of spotty. She's wearing a black t-shirt and her hair is shorter than he's used to, at her shoulders, pale blonde and wavy. It's like seeing her in a movie, except that she smiles at the sight of him and says, "Hi, you must be Bellamy."

His voice takes a second to start working. "Yeah, hi, that's me." He manages a smile. "Sorry, I still wasn't expecting it to be you, you know?"

"Who were you expecting?" she asks, amused. 

"I don't know. Your assistant vetting me again? Someone pulling a prank?"

"From my verified account."

"This is pretty surreal, anything could happen."

She sobers. "Yeah, I'm sure it's been a weird couple of days for you."

"And a weird life for you."

Her laugh sounds like it takes her by surprise. "A very weird life for me. Can I see your wrist?"

He holds up his hand to the camera on his laptop. He's been doing this a lot recently, part of his bid to prove that he really is Clarke Griffin's soulmate, and it never stops feeling awkward. Wrists just aren't a part of his body he shows off.

"There could be some small details that are different," he says, into the silence. "But the positioning looked right, so--"

"Yeah, that looks a lot like mine." 

He clears his throat. "So, uh--what next?"

"Honestly? I have no idea. I was hoping I just wouldn't have a soulmate for a while."

"Me too. I wasn't really in a rush. But I figured you might want to stop having people claiming to be your soulmate."

"Yeah, that would be nice. It's been less than a week and I'm already tired of it."

"It's bad enough for me, I can't imagine what your notifications look like."

"What kind of stuff are you getting?"

"A lot of people telling me I'm a liar keeping you from your true soulmate. They can't agree on who your true soulmate is, it seems like there are factions. But they're all in agreement that I'm a fake."

She smiles at that, rolls her eyes. "Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. None of my exes have gone public with soulmates, so people were hoping mine would match one of theirs."

"They're still hoping. I've got people on twitter telling me that your soulmark is really somewhere else and this one is a fake, so I shouldn't get my hopes up."

"Fake soulmarks just seem like a shitty idea," she muses. "I get the appeal? And some celebrities have them, but--yeah. They're annoying to get and maintain and if you accidentally hit on someone's actual mark, it sucks for everyone."

"So that's your real mark," he says. "This isn't your roundabout way of telling me you really are Lexa Fira's soulmate and you two are trying to throw everyone off?"

"It's my real mark," she confirms, and holds her own arm up so he can see. It gives him an odd, electric thrill, seeing it in motion, attached to her. He hadn't thought it was fake, but it hadn't felt real either.

She really does seem to be his soulmate.

"Okay," he says. "Cool."

She cracks up laughing, and after a second, he does too. They can't be the only people in history to be dealing with this, but it does feel pretty uniquely absurd. 

"When my parents met, they were at a wedding and they were both reaching for the same piece of cake and their hands touched and they saw the matching soulmarks," Clarke says, once she's recovered. "That's what I was imagining."

"Yeah, but you're a celebrity. You had to be kind of ready for this."

"Kind of. But if my soulmate missed the initial flurry of press--"

"Sorry my sister pays attention to this shit."

She shrugs. "Once it was on my wrist, I didn't have a lot of hope. Everyone you meet knows what your soulmark looks like. It wasn't going to take long for someone to tell you it matched mine."

"No." He runs his hand through his hair, sighs. "So, what now?"

"I'm going to Spain," she says, with a sheepish smile.

"That's one option."

"I booked a movie over there, we're filming from Thanksgiving to Christmas, basically. I thought I maybe wouldn't want to be in the country after my birthday."

"That sounds cool."

"Yeah, I think it's going to be fun. And you've got school, right?"

"Yeah."

"We could email? Or text or something."

The suggestion is half-hearted, not that Bellamy blames her. Clarke isn't the biggest star in the world, but she's up there, definitely a household name. This can't have been what she was hoping for.

"It doesn't have to be a big thing," he says. 

"You're my soulmate," she says, all gentle teasing. "You're saying that's not a big deal?"

"Okay, it is. But we can just talk when we get back from Spain."

"What did you want?" she asks. "From your soulmate."

It's such a reasonable, well-intentioned question that Bellamy can't help a wince. He went through stages, with soulmates. His parents weren't soulmates, got their marks when his mother was pregnant. They stayed together, amicably, as friends, until they found their soulmates. 

And then his mother's soulmate died when he was eight, and he'd spent the next few years resolute in his private belief that soulmates were stupid and he didn't want one. Not if losing them hurt so much.

But his father and his stepmother were so happy, and then he hit puberty and started trying to date, which was a nightmare. He'd come around to soulmates as a nice, easy solution, because that's how he thought it would be. He'd get his soulmate, and everything else would fall effortlessly into place.

It was always a childish notion, but it feels so much stupider now, talking to _Clarke Griffin_. It was never going to be simple for her, and now it won't be for him either. The least he can do is not rub it in.

"I wanted someone who got me," he says, slow. It's not a lie; it's a selective interpretation of the truth. "My parents weren't soulmates, so I got to see them find theirs, how much better they were with my step-parents than they were with each other. I wanted to have that same thing, someone who got me. Someone who made me feel like I was better with them."

Even that feels like too much, once he's said it. She doesn't owe him anything. 

But Clarke thinks it over, nods. "That does sound really nice." She sighs. "Look, I know this isn't what you were expecting. I'm not a great soulmate, but--"

" _You_ aren't?" he asks, and her mouth twists.

"Everyone thinks that dating a celebrity would be cool, but how much easier would your life be if I was just another student and our friends figured out we had matching soulmarks?"

"How much easier would your life be if I was a celebrity?" he shoots back.

She makes a face. "Not really that much easier. It would just be a different kind of annoying. Fame makes a lot of things messy, this is just one of them."

"So what does a good soulmate look like to you?"

"Someone I can talk to," she says, instantly. "Someone who's there for me and doesn't want to use me for anything. Just--an ally. A best friend."

On the one hand, it's a bleak, kind of sad thing to want, and it says terrible things about Clarke's overall life, but on the other, it's not _hard_. He can be that soulmate; he'd like to be.

"So, you weren't saying we could email just because you feel sorry for me?"

She laughs again. "No, that wasn't it. I'm not a great correspondent, but--it's a place to start, right?"

"I don't know how great I'll be either, but we can try it, yeah." They lapse into silence, long enough that he convinces himself it's right to say, "Listen, I don't--all of this is new for me. Celebrity stuff. I don't know what I'm supposed to do or not do, so I'm going to assume I don't tell anyone what you tell me and if anyone asks me questions, I say no comment."

"That's about right." She sighs. "We'll make a post about how you're my soulmate and I'm filming in Spain, so hopefully people won't poke around your place looking for me. And then it should die down in a few weeks."

"Yeah, I'm pretty boring." He cocks his head, regarding her. "Do you like video-chatting?"

"I don't hate it. Why?"

"We could do this too. Once a week, just to check in. And email. We're soulmates, right?" he adds, with a smile. "We might as well get what we want out of it."

Clarke smiles back, and his heart twinges in his chest, just a little. It's been easy to ignore the simple fact of being attracted to her because it's something he takes for granted. She's famous, and she's always been pretty. Plenty of his friends listed her highly on their list of celebrities they'd like to fuck, and he'd never disagreed with the placement. Clarke is hot.

It was easier to think it before she was his soulmate.

"That sounds really nice," she says, and the attraction churns into guilt. She needs a friend, not yet another dude drooling over her. "Same time next week?"

That part is easy. "Yeah, it's a date."

*

"So, how's your soulmate?"

The question annoys Clarke less from her mother than it does from most people; her mother actually has a legitimate interest in her love life, unlike the reporters and fans and other random people who want gossip but haven't earned it. She's only known him for a week, there isn't much to say yet, and even less she wants to say for public consumption.

But Abby has been holding herself back from asking too many questions, waiting for Clarke to be home for Thanksgiving, and she _does_ deserve some answers.

"He's good, so far," she says, pausing as she works on the pumpkin pie. "We haven't gotten to talk that much, but we've been emailing some, and texting. He seems like a good guy."

"He's a year older than you?"

"A year and a half. His birthday is in February."

"And he's a grad student?"

"Yeah. He's finishing up his second-to-last semester, and then he's going to be looking for jobs teaching high school in the fall. Maybe do a PhD in a few years."

"Is he thinking of teaching in California?"

Clarke rolls her eyes. "Mom, it's been less than a week."

"And? He's your soulmate. Plenty of people would be making plans already."

"I still haven't even met him in person yet. It's kind of nice," she admits. "Not feeling like we're in a rush. We're both busy, but--" She wets her lips; she hadn't told anyone this yet, not even Monty and Raven. "I think if it goes well while I'm filming, I'll try to go and visit him after Christmas? I've got a break then, and so does he."

"You don't have to be so careful here, that's the point of soulmarks. You already know he's good for you."

Clarke glances at her wrist, her stomach giving its usual lurch at the sight of the mark there, the twined sun and moon that still doesn't feel quite like a part of her.

"I think I've earned some caution," she says. "Plenty of celebrities have gotten burned because their soulmates like fame more than they like love."

"I know." Abby sighs. "I'd just like to see you be excited about this. It might not be perfect, but it is good news."

"It is. I'm waiting a month, Mom," she adds, only letting the gentlest of exasperation through into her tone. "It's not like I'm avoiding him, we're just busy. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't drop my whole life to go to New York State and hang out in my soulmate's crappy apartment."

Her mouth twitches into a smile. "When you put it like that. What's he doing for Thanksgiving?"

"Spending it with his family. He and his sister are close, he helped take care of her a lot when they were growing up. I guess his mom's soulmate died when his sister was still really young, and his mom was so broken up about it, he picked up a lot of slack."

"Not his dad?" 

Clarke shakes her head. "She got pregnant in high school, before she and his dad had their soulmarks. His dad was in the picture for a while, but he moved states after he met his soulmate, and then the two of them moved back to Manila when Bellamy was in high school."

"He sounds like a very nice boy," Abby decides, despite not having a ton of evidence either way, in Clarke's opinion. "I hope I get to meet him soon."

"Me too." It's not a lie, but she still has to needle Abby, just a little. She knows that her parents met and fell in love within the space of a few weeks, but they were in their late twenties, living in the same place, and turned out to have some friends in common. They'd been ready for love and ready to settle down; Clarke would have delayed her soulmark for at least a year, if she'd been allowed to. "I hope I get to meet him too," she says, and her mother laughs.

"That does sound like a better first step."

*

"My mom is worried we haven't met yet," she tells Bellamy, when she calls him that night. "And that we don't have plans to."

"That's bad, but my sister says that reporters are DMing her on twitter to try to get more information about me, so I win."

Clarke frowns at the ceiling. "Can't she just block them? I don't know much about twitter, but I know I have DMs limited to--people I follow, maybe? And I can block people who are being dicks."

"She could, but she isn't." He sighs. "I'm not going to try to use you to get famous, but I can't make the same promise about Octavia. And there were reporters on campus too, trying to get more information about me from anyone who's willing to talk. My friends all swore they wouldn't, but it's not hard for people to say they're my friends and make shit up."

Clarke worries her lip. "Do you want some help?"

"What kind of help?"

"You remember my assistant, Monty?"

"The one who gave me your skype info?"

"Yeah. He's not coming to Spain because I don't really need an assistant on-set, but he could go to New York."

Bellamy grunts, a strange little noise, and Clarke closes her eyes, trying to picture him. They've only video-chatted twice, enough to give her a decent mental picture of him, but not enough for her to have learned all his little quirks, not enough for her to know how he looks in motion.

"What exactly would he do here?" he asks, after giving it some thought.

"Help you out with PR, be available for questions, get some statements out from you so that the media is less desperate for information. And he can definitely tell them to leave your sister alone."

"Honestly, that sounds really good." He sighs. "And I could use someone to tell me I'm not fucking anything up."

"You're not fucking anything up," she says, prompt, and he laughs.

"Thanks."

"You're not. You don't have any of my secrets to sell, so--"

"I could leak your fake-sounding skype username."

"Which only you and Monty have, so I'd know it came from you. Monty has better things to leak."

"Yeah, they probably wouldn't even pay me that much. When do you leave again?"

"Sunday morning."

"So we can skype on Saturday afternoon."

Her chest warms. "Yeah, we're set for Saturday. And I can talk to Monty about going out there. I just need to find him a pet-friendly hotel."

"Your pet or his?"

"His. He's got a dog who's pretty good at traveling, so he likes to bring her places."

"Me and Miller have a room he could have, if he wants. Unless that would be weirder."

"I'll check with him. You're still there, right? You didn't have to travel for Thanksgiving?"

"Yeah, it's just an hour drive, so I didn't need to stay the night with my mom."

"Okay." She doesn't really have anything else to say, but she doesn't want to hang up, so she just relaxes against her pillow, closing her eyes and listening to him breathing. She meant it when she told her mom it hadn't been that long, but--it's already nice. "Anything else going on tonight?"

"Nope. I'm all yours."

He _is_ ; that's the best part. "Good," she says, unable to keep a smile off her face. "Tell me about dinner."

*

It feels a little unfair that Bellamy is meeting Clarke's assistant before he meets Clarke, but he's doing his best to not take it personally. Clarke didn't send Monty instead of coming herself; coming herself wasn't an option. She sent Monty to help him, and given how completely over his head is, it's appreciated. Monty's going to be a huge help.

He just can't fucking wait to meet Clarke.

Monty shows up on Sunday, having caught a ride to the airport with the woman in question, but of course he gets to Bellamy long before Clarke gets to Spain. Bellamy's got a volunteer shift at the museum, so he's not there when Monty arrives, but Miller agrees to give him the house tour.

When Bellamy gets back, they're playing video games with Monty's dog, so that's got to be a good sign.

The dog is the first one to notice Bellamy, running over with its tail wagging wildly. Monty--well, he assumes, it's probably not a stranger on their couch with a dog--calls, "Don't jump, Quartz."

"It's just Bellamy, he can take it."

"Thanks, Miller." He crouches down to let the dog smell him. "You're Clarke's assistant?"

"And you're her soulmate. How tall are you? She wanted me to find out without asking but that sounded harder than just asking."

He sits down next to Miller and the dog follows him to continue sniffing. "I'm five nine, how tall is she?"

"Five five, good height difference. Anything you want to know about her?"

Of course, he wants to know everything. But he wants Clarke to be the one who tells him. "Not off the top of my head."

"Cool, just let me know." He puts his controller aside. "Okay, so, media. Nate already told me some of what you need."

Bellamy's eyebrows shoot up. He knows Miller's first name is Nate, but it's in the same way he knows Obama's first name is Barack. He'd never just call him that. _No one_ calls him Nate.

Miller is looking very pointedly at the screen.

"Nate has, huh? What did he say?"

"We have paparazzi sometimes," says Miller, either ignoring or not noticing his tone. "I get calls at work. You get barraged. Everyone in town knows who you are now."

"Yeah, well, it's not a huge town."

"People want more information about you," Monty muses. "I bet you picked up a ton of twitter followers."

"I haven't really looked." Once twitter served its purpose of getting him in touch with Clarke, he decided to ignore it. It was freaking him out. "I was getting some but I haven't logged in since I got Clarke's contact information."

This apparently means that the first step is letting Monty log into his twitter to assess the damage, which sounds a lot better than doing it himself. Monty presumably does some amount of Clarke's social media, so he's probably better at sorting through this shit than Bellamy is. Bellamy logs into twitter once every few months, retweets like two things, and then remembers why he's not on twitter more. 

"Okay, you definitely need to be more active. Would you let Raven have your password?"

"Raven?"

"Social-media manager."

"She has a separate social-media manager?" Miller asks.

Monty shrugs it off. "She's pretty famous. Raven's real job is movie special effects, but she and Clarke are friends so Clarke pays her to do social media on the side. I assume your social media would be covered too. She'll have fun with it."

Bellamy rubs his face. It's not that it's a bad idea--it sounds great, honestly--but more that he not only needs someone to manage his social media, but he already has a contact. His soulmate has a social-media manager, and she can manage his too. It's a lot to process.

"What's she going to do for me?"

"Decide what to respond to, make a couple posts a week so it doesn't look like you died or dropped off the face of the internet, design and maintain a brand for you."

"This is fucked up."

"Welcome to being semi-famous," says Monty, with another shrug of his shoulders. This is all normal for him; it's his job. If all he does here is teach Bellamy how to feel like this is his life, it'll be a very productive life. "Everyone thinks it's so awesome," he adds, echoing Clarke, "but I really hope my soulmate is just a normal person."

"What's your mark?" Miller asks. He's definitely trying to sound like he cares a normal amount.

"Pending," says Monty. "My birthday is in April. What's yours?"

"Maple leaf on my left shoulder." 

He's definitely hoping this information will matter to Monty; he usually just says _leaf on my back_. Bellamy could be a supportive friend, but instead he says, "Because he's a Canadian stereotype."

"Fuck you," Miller says, easy. "You were heartbroken when I wasn't your soulmate."

"I was, but now my soulmate is a celebrity, so--"

"You're too good for me, I get it."

Monty is smiling, watching them with the kind of vaguely fond expression Bellamy recognizes as enjoying a joke he's not really a part of. If his goal is to make a good impression on Clarke's assistant, he seems to be achieving it.

Right on cue, his phone buzzes with a message from Clarke: _You're done with work, right? Did Monty get there? I'm stuck on a plane, I need updates_.

"Clarke checking in," he says, holding up the phone like he needs to prove it. "I guess she's bored."

"Uh huh," says Monty. "That must be it."

*

 **Me** : Monty's here  
My roommate is flirting with him  
I'm 5'9"

 **Clarke** : He wasn't supposed to tell you  
I didn't know your roommate liked guys

 **Me** : Exclusively  
Does Monty?

 **Clarke** : Yeah, but not exclusively  
We're bi buddies  
Is he helping?

 **Me** : He says I should give Raven my twitter password

 **Clarke** : You probably should  
She's good at it

 **Me** : I can't believe you have a social media manager

 **Clarke** : I'm a job creator

 **Me** : Couldn't you just not have social media?

 **Clarke** : These days? No way  
I'm expected to do social media promo for everything  
It's in my contract a lot of the time  
I suck at it, so Raven does it and gets some extra cash and I get peace of mind  
Everyone wins

 **Me** : Your life is so fucking weird  
Monty says I should do an interview

 **Clarke** : Are you hoping I'll tell you not to?

 **Me** : Just keeping you in the loop

 **Clarke** : It's probably a good idea  
You're not giving them information about yourself, so they're desperate for anything  
So if you give them information, they'll be less weird

 **Me** : That's what Monty said  
I just can't get over people being that interested in me  
I'm pretty boring

 **Clarke** : So do an interview  
Let everyone find out how boring you are and they'll stop caring

 **Me** : Thanks, that makes me feel so much better

 **Clarke** : I assume that's what you want  
If you want to be popular and famous, you can make that happen  
You're hot and smart and cool, if you want everyone to love you, they will  
But I didn't think that was what you were looking for

 **Me** : No, not really  
But thanks for the vote of confidence

 **Clarke** : What are soulmates for?

Bellamy's eyes flick between the last message and Clarke's casual assertion that he's _hot and smart and cool_. So far, he wouldn't say the two of them are exactly acting like _soulmates_ , more just--allies. People who have been yoked together by fate, without any romance in it. It's an awkward thing to bring up, when they have so much _practical_ stuff to deal with.

But she thinks he's hot. _Clarke Griffin_ thinks he's hot.

 **Me** : Honestly I still don't know what soulmates are for  
But I'm looking forward to finding out

*

"You know, when I heard you found your soulmate, I thought you might bail out on me."

Clarke smiles and gives Marcus a hug. Avoiding all of the soulmate hype was definitely a large part of why she signed up for the movie, but Marcus himself was the second biggest draw. He and her mom used to date before they got their soulmarks, and even after, they stayed friends. He's basically family, in addition to being a great director.

"I wouldn't leave you in the lurch like that."

"I would have understood if you did. He's a teacher?"

"Graduate student planning to become a teacher. Are you reading gossip or talking to my mother?"

"Who says I can't do both?" He tilts his head, considering her. "I know it hasn't been very long, but how's it going? I know how hard it can be with a soulmate who isn't in the industry."

"A teacher, even," Clarke says, smiling. Marcus's soulmate is a high-school Earth sciences teacher named Charles, and even if they've been together and happy for as long as she can remember, she knows it was tough going for them. Marcus was an actor at the time, high-profile in the same way Clarke was, and his soulmate was a big deal.

And when his soulmate was not only male, but black? Clarke still sees people talking about how big a deal it was, from time to time.

"I don't think it's going to be that bad for us," she says.

"I certainly hope not. But I don't envy you dealing with all of this in the social-media age."

"There's always something to make things complicated."

"But the soulmate is good?"

Clarke knows the smile that takes over her face is ridiculous. It still feels premature, to be this happy with him, even knowing it's normal, that this is how soulmates are _supposed_ to be. She still hasn't even met him in person. But he's so easy to talk to, such a natural fit into her life, that it's hard to stay detached and cynical.

"So far, yeah," she says. "So, tell me about the movie."

*

"Tell me about the movie," Bellamy says on their Thursday call. She'd wanted to do a video call so she could see his face, but she talked herself out of asking. It felt a little desperate, especially when Raven signed him up for instagram and posted a couple pictures. She knows what he looks like, it's not a big deal. His voice is enough. "Or are you not allowed to?"

"I assume you're not going to tell anyone."

"I'm waiting for something really big to sell to the press, this probably isn't it."

She has to smile. "And yet you never tell me to send nudes."

"If you want to send me nudes, I'm not going to say no. But that's your call."

"Haven't you ever heard it's better to give than to receive?" 

He doesn't respond immediately, and Clarke can't help thinking she's crossed a line, that she shouldn't have brought it up. Too much soulmate. 

She veers away. "So, the movie. I'm playing Ariel, a woman looking for her mom's soulmate."

"Not her dad?"

"No, he disappeared before she was born. Her mom met someone else in a support group for people who lost their soulmates, that's her dad. She finds a letter from her mom's soulmate about how he had to go, so she decides to track him down."

"Huh. What's the genre? Is this, like, he's a spy, or he had a family issue?"

"If I tell you everything, you aren't going to want to see it."

"I've actually been working my way through your whole filmography. I'm seeing everything you've ever been in."

She laughs. "Really?"

"Raven asked what my favorite role of yours was and I only knew like three. I figure if I'm going to get asked about you all the time, I should have some educated opinions. I never even watched your show regularly."

"It wasn't good regularly, so I don't blame you. There's a lot of my filmography you can skip too."

"That's what Monty said, but I'm good. I like watching you. Even if the movie isn't great, you always are."

She flushes, glad to be alone in her hotel room with no witnesses. She _knows_ she's a good actress, but she's also famous enough to have hit the backlash phase, to feel like she hears she's overrated as often as she hears she's brilliant. Bellamy seems to really be a casual fan, and it's nice that more exposure isn't making him hate her.

"I should probably let you go," he says, reluctance clear in his voice. "I know you've got an early call tomorrow."

"I do. What are you doing for the rest of the day?"

"Homework, mostly. I've got the interview Monty set up tomorrow, so he's prepping me for that too. I think it should be okay."

"You'll do great. Text me after, let me know how it goes?"

"Will do. Get some sleep, Clarke."

"You too. In like six hours."

"Can't wait. Goodnight."

She's brushing her teeth when the phone buzzes with a text from Bellamy, followed by an attachment. Curious, she unlocks the phone to look and finds a picture of him, apparently naked, photographed from just above the hips, all smooth, tan skin and muscle. There's just the hint of coarse black hair right at the bottom of the picture, just enough to make her want more, to wish she could scroll down and see the rest of him.

Since she can't, her eyes rove over what she does have. She knew he worked out, has occasionally had conversations end when he goes to the gym, but she hadn't realized how good he'd look, hadn't realized how much she'd want him.

She already wanted him plenty; she didn't think his naked chest would make that much of a difference.

 _This is as nude as I get in the first text_ , she sees, when she finally gets to the caption. _Sweet dreams_.

The smart thing to do would be to not respond, or to respond with just an emoji or something. It's not like the message is going anywhere, and she doesn't have to say anything right now. She can always get some sleep and reply tomorrow after filming, when she has more time.

That's the smart choice.

 **Me** : How many texts before you get nuder?

 **Bellamy** : I haven't decided yet  
But it might be a quid-pro-quo thing

 **Me** : A shirtless pic from me is worth a lot more than a shirtless pic from you

 **Bellamy** : Yeah, it sucks how sexualized female bodies are

 **Me** : Also because I'm a celebrity

 **Bellamy** : Also that

 **Me** : I wasn't really expecting you to send nudes

 **Bellamy** : Well, I'm not really nude  
I'd never send a dick pic without explicit consent  
You'd have to ask for it

Her breath comes short and fast, her heartrate spiking as she looks at the words. She's not tired at all, suddenly; she's never been more awake.

She strips off her clothes as she leaves the bathroom, flops down on the bed naked and to test out a couple shots. It's genuinely reckless and stupid, to be thinking about texting her soulmate nudes, but--she wants to.

Her compromise is to have her arm over her breasts, covering enough that the pictures are racy but not out right pornographic. And pretty hot, if she does say so herself.

 _How much nudity does this get me?_ she asks, and sends the picture.

The phone rings again after only a few seconds, and she picks up.

"I'm not saying I don't like that, because fuck, I do, but I realized you probably shouldn't send me nudes. If I got hacked or something--"

"It was your idea," she teases.

"Yeah, and I wouldn't mind, except I'm a really easy target." She can hear him swallow. "But you could tell me what you'd send, if you were going to send me something."

Her hand creeps down her chest. "I probably could, yeah."

*

Bellamy doesn't _need_ to be a nervous wreck about meeting Clarke in person for the first time. They've been talking for a month and a half now, and having phone sex every few days for the last month. She's his soulmate, he knows she likes him and is probably on her way to being in love with him. Things are, by every possible metric, going well. And she's the one who invited him to spend New Year's Eve with her in LA, unprompted. She definitely wants to see him.

It is, somehow, still terrifying. 

He and Monty are on the same flight, which is a mild heartbreak for Miller, but if it's meant to be, Monty will be back in touch when he gets his own maple-leaf soulmark in April. And it's great for Bellamy, who has some company in the form of Monty and distraction in the form of Quartz, who's periodically whimpering from within her carrier. It's not enough to keep him from obsessing over the fact that every minute of the plane ride is bringing him closer to Clarke, but it beats the alternative.

Since Monty is already here and left his car in long-term parking, they agreed there was no point in Clarke coming to the airport to meet them. Monty will drop him off at her place, which is a little lower profile anyway. It's the right call.

"You know she likes you, right?" Monty asks once they're on the freeway. He's apparently not as good at acting cool as he hoped. "You don't have to be nervous."

"If you were meeting your soulmate for the first time, would you be nervous?"

His face screws up. "Okay, yeah. But--Clarke's crazy about you. And you're great, you're not going to be a disappointment."

"Thanks," he says, a little surprised. "Am I that obvious?"

"Like you said, you're meeting your soulmate for the first time. Anyone would be nervous. And I've been giving Clarke the same talk, so I thought you'd appreciate it."

"We've been having the same conversation with each other too," Bellamy admits. "I guess you can't hear it too much. I'll return the favor when you meet your soulmate."

"Thanks." He drums the steering wheel. "I'm kind of hoping I already met him."

Bellamy grins. "Yeah? Me too."

They chat about Miller, which is a good way to distract himself, and Monty's own conflicting feelings about getting his soulmark. Bellamy still doesn't feel like a wise expert, and he wants to hold onto that feeling for as long as possible, before he becomes yet another _finding your soulmate is perfect and wonderful_ person.

It's going to happen, he's pretty sure, because finding his soulmate _is_ perfect and wonderful, but at least he still understands that it's surreal and terrifying, too. 

"Okay," says Monty, as they turn down a quiet street. "Almost there."

All the tension rushes back into him. "Great."

"You could text her, you'll feel better."

He does, and the response comes back almost immediately: _Awesome, can't wait to see you!_

Monty's pretty smart.

There's a gate outside Clarke's place, with a high wall, and Monty puts in a code to open it up, which is at least less intimidating than her having an actual security guard. Clarke is just inside, waiting on her steps, dressed in jeans and a gray tank-top, watching the car. She somehow looks both exactly how he expected and better than he could have imagined.

"Thanks for the ride," he tells Monty, unable to pull his attention from Clarke. "See you for New Year's?"

"Assuming the two of you can drag yourself out of bed. It's okay if you don't; I bet Raven you wouldn't show, so it would actually be good for me."

He finally turns away from Clarke then, flashes Monty a quick smile. "I'll keep that in mind."

He grabs his bag from the backseat, walks over to the stairs. Clarke is standing, still smiling, and it's surreal for a minute, all these impossible things piling up on top of each other. In less than two months, she's become his best friend, crush, and favorite person, but at heart she's still Clarke Griffin, movie star.

This shouldn't be happening, but here he is.

"Hi, you must be Bellamy," she says, and he laughs, wraps her up in his arms. She smells like sunshine and lilacs, and she fits perfectly against him, just like she's supposed to. 

Just like they were meant to be.

"Hi."

"Hi. How was the flight?"

"Worth it." He pulls back, eyes rocking over her. "So, uh--where are we, exactly? On the relationship scale? Can I--"

She tugs him down before he can finish, is already kissing him as the words die on his lips, and there's nothing to do but pull her close and kiss her back.

*

"Do you think I could come hang out in Ithaca for a month?" Clarke asks. She's curled up against Bellamy's chest, feeling warm and safe and loved, and if she had her way, she'd never leave.

Soulmates are great.

"You could if you want. It's boring and everyone in the entire town would know about it, but maybe it would be good for tourism." He kisses her hair. "Don't you have more jobs lined up?"

"Not until February. I could come stay with you, right? I'll bring Monty to bribe Miller."

"I don't think you can bribe my roommate with your assistant. Morally speaking. I'm not saying it wouldn't work, it just kind of sounds like you're selling him or something."

"But if I brought Monty--"

"Four people and a dog in our place is pushing it a little, but I think we could make it work." He kisses her hair. "I'm saying maybe you shouldn't bring Monty, not that you shouldn't come, by the way. Miller will be fine with it either way."

"My mom asked if you were thinking about getting a job in California after graduation. I thought it seemed a little soon, but now--"

"I bet I could get a job in California."

"I've got some connections."

"In the public school system?"

"I'm famous, I have connections everywhere."

"Lucky you."

"Hey, you're my soulmate. What's mine is yours, so we can definitely get you a job here. They're your connections now."

"Lucky us," he corrects, and Clarke snuggles closer, her smile taking over her entire body.

"Yeah, lucky us."


End file.
